The 4th of July

I think of this little girl every fourth since I found her picture almost 6 years ago. This, aside from family photographs of course, is my most prized and adored photograph. I have made up a thousand stories in my mind about her and a thousand questions....where was she?what was her little name?who decorated the buggy?did she tie her own boots? Did she have a good life? Somehow, does she know what she means to me?Though I know she has most likely left this world already....somehow does she know that I send love to her every time I see her face?
I'd like to think so. It gives me peace to think so.
I don't think I could manage this life if I lived it believing there was nothing more after this world...that this was all there is...that there was nothing divine about our humanness...

Somehow this has me thinking about my father and how I hear his voice speak to me often since I learned of his death. In the small and quiet places when I can talk to him out loud, he answers me. Is he really speaking to me, or is it just a way to cope with his loss? to cope with the profound loss of the hope for reparation that came with his passing from me? Does it really matter?
My thought is, that as long as love and gratitude and wonder take the place of hate and despair and hopelessness, then the world is better....humanity is better....and healing takes place. And that is what works. It is those things that make a difference. It has nothing to do with religious rites or "moralists" or the people out there trying so adamantly to prove that no God exists. I think it is about loving the questions and regarding the mystery with wonder.
This little girl, the one in this photograph, does she know how she's changed the world? By posing for a photograph on a hot July day so long ago. Simply standing there in her boots and in her innocence...she has changed the whole world. And she knows it because I tell her, and she hears me...and because I am here to tell her story with love and gratitude and wonder.